By @SimonCocking, review of Blockchain for Dummies by Tiana Laurence, you can buy it from Wiley here.
Here is the publisher’s description first :
Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin, the revolutionary ‘virtual currency’ that is changing the way people do business. While Bitcoin has enjoyed some well-deserved hype, Blockchain maybe Bitcoin’s most vital legacy. Blockchain For Dummies is the ideal starting place for business pros looking to gain a better understanding of what Blockchain is, how it can improve the integrity of their data, and how it can work to fundamentally change their business and enhance their data security.
Blockchain For Dummies covers the essential things you need to know about this exciting technology’s promise of revolutionizing financial transactions, data security, and information integrity. The book covers the technologies behind Blockchain, introduces a variety of existing Blockchain solutions, and even walks you through creating a small but working Blockchain-based application.
As you can imagine there is a lot of hype around blockchain at the moment. As this book is part of the ‘for dummies’ series it is an attempt to get back to basics and explain what blockchain means. Who are the key players, what does it do, how does it work, how to install your own cryptocurrency wallets, whether for bitcoin, ether or something else. We read it once, about 3 months ago, slowly worked our way through creating a ‘myetherwallet’ and then began learning more about the whole area. The great thing about this book, however, is that it rewards you for a second reading, and offers more depth and explanation, for when you are ready to return it. This book is already becoming a well-thumbed guide in our house, and we would recommend it to others. You might not want to let everyone know that you are using a ‘for dummies’ guide, but it is well written, really helpful, and not judging you for the fact that in such a new area, many of us are still working out what is going on, and the best ways to deal with this exciting new area of opportunities.
We spoke to the author too, figuring that she would know better than anyone else, how close we are to seeing a lot of this technology impacting on our daily lives. Tiana explained that “the industry is now finishing up the first tests of their ideas and now looking to move away from prototype to the commercialization of the good ideas. Next year we should start seeing them in the actual marketplace.” Laurence is working on an interesting project herself, and is definitely one to watch in a new and fast-evolving space.
As useful resources go, this is one to keep near to hand for now and we’d recommend it for those who are working in this area, but who are not genius coders who built Ethereum – for the rest of us, this is a really useful book and we’d recommend it.
